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In Elgeyo Marakwet, settler colonists belonged to three tribes: Boers, who loved cattle, Italians who only seemed to care about the E.African Railway, and the Scottish, who learned Keiyo so quick that it was hard to have conversations around them.
Cameron, son of Finlay, was Scottish but he cared less about being one and spent his entire childhood being as Keiyo as he could possibly be. He grew up with my grand-uncle, Samatei.
They belonged to the age-group Maina, who were too young to fight in WW1 and too middle-aged to fight in WW2.
As boys, they hunted hare and dikdik with arrows made entirely from wood. As young men, they sneaked on beer pots left behind by elders and sharing a straw, sucked the remnants of alcohol. With time, they were old enough to join adult men in these beer parties.
Tipsy Cameron would join in all the songs: singing about past battles, cattle raids, elephant hunts, clan names and their totems, and other very vulgar compositions because by this time Victorian values were yet to be imposed on the Keiyo and they could talk dirty.
They loved many women. When Samatei wanted to marry his third wife, he went to Cameron to borrow a lorry in order to carry pots of beer to his in-laws, and Cameron, in jest, told him
"Samatei, iibisie akoi au? Kiip nebo kapAmdanya, kiip nebo KapChesergon, ara ngiip nguno nebo kapTarkwen!"
Cameron wanted to marry as well. But by this time his father Finlay was tired of his son mixing with "the natives" and had planned to whisk him back to Scotland.
Cameron wanted to marry as well. But by this time his father Finlay was tired of his son mixing with "the natives" and had planned to whisk him back to Scotland.
Cameron agreed, but took with him to Mombasa, his lover Chemaiyo, who was also Samatei’s cousin. Knowing that she wouldn’t be allowed to sail, he convinced her to lock herself inside an empty suitcase which he proceeded to identify, to port officials, as railway equipment.
Of course they saw through the farce and as Cameron left, Chemaiyo was bundled on the next train to Nakuru, where she was driven to the police station at Tambach, then let go.
Cameron did come back to Kenya, but he was then too white to mix with the Keiyo. Independence was also nigh, and his family sold their STOLEN land back to the government. He was last spotted in Eldoret in the 70s, going inside Barclays Bank.
Chemaiyo, on the other hand, married another Keiyo man whom she outlived, had about 10 or so babies, of which about 7 or so survived past childhood. Basically she had a regular life for a Keiyo woman of her time.
When I was a child, she had become an old woman of terrifying aspect, who was followed everywhere by a multitude of dogs and who lived in a grass-thatched hut that was surrounded by tall podo trees, forever under shadow.
It was rumored that Cameron had given her a life-sized doll, which she kept in her hut and which could move and talk like a person. But as kids we couldn& #39;t dare check. We fervently believed that she had developed a taste for human ears and would eagerly cut ours up to cook.
We also referred to her as Mamsap, which is the shortened version of Memsahib, which means 
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The women she drank with, many who sold busaa and chang& #39;aa and at times sold sex as well, didn& #39;t mind her company though.
And when it was her time to die, which happened as she was drinking, these women tried to carry her to the local morgue.
But it was a hot afternoon and her corpse felt so heavy. There was also still so much alcohol to sell. So they left Mamsap under a tree shade and attended to more urgent business.
